Sunday, July 25, 2010

I was surprised when Lou announced at the 10:30 service today that there would be no August issue of The Messenger. This is certainly an unwelcome innovation. As long as I have been at St. Paul’s, we have had a newsletter every month. In fact, years ago, St. Paul’s also sent out a 1-page mid-month update on legal-size paper each month. (Admittedly, this was before the Internet had become a factor in the lives of most of us.)

Why, in 2010, we cannot manage to produce an August newsletter, I don’t know. I suspect, however, that the decision was a last minute one. If we had actually planned to skip the August issue, we should have included an August calendar in the July issue along with the July calendar. Of course, not all August events would have been known by the end of June, which is one reason we usually have an August Messenger.

The weekly e-mail message can compensate somewhat for the lack of a printed newsletter, though not for those parishioners—I have no idea how many there are—without access to e-mail. I hope we are not also going to see an August without e-mail missives. Under the circumstances, I would think that we would want to expand the quantity of information communicated through e-mail next month.